For the First Time in Forever (I Could Be Noticed By Someone)
by astrarisks
Summary: Every story has a beginning. Here's one of them. :: pre-korra/asami. :: {written for round 1 of the pro-bending circuit comp.}


_(uploaded — 1.12.15) _:: _[this says pre-korrasami but it's more of an asami sato character study idk. as for the title, i couldn't think of another name and the song came up on my itunes shuffle and my personal slogan is "frozen 4 lyfe" so there ya go. regardless, i think it ended up fitting rather well. enjoy, regardless of whether you're reading it for the competition or just bc u stumbled across it.]_

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reserve fic for the white falls wolfbats' firebender position (first time someone hurt another person). the content itself, excluding the notes and the title/heading, is exactly 3500 words (and it would have been longer and it was ridiculously difficult to shave down #_#).

_prompts:_ alone (1 pt.), friendship (2 pts.), "Nothing is impossible..." (3 pts.) + mentions of fire (3 pts.) — asami sato character study.

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_I don't own _The Legend of Korra_. You can also find this on Tumblr._

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><p><strong>For the First Time in Forever (I Could Be Noticed By Someone)<strong>

.

.

_and i know it's totally crazy  
><em>_to dream i'd find romance  
><em>_but for the first time in forever  
><em>_at least i've got a chance_

* * *

><p><em>i. once upon a time<em>_,_

The first thing Asami will say when asked about her mother's bedroom is that it's large and roomy and it absolutely reeks of death.

She avoids that place like the plague, ever since _The Incident,_ but despite all her efforts, the sound of crackling fire and her mother's screams are featured prominently in her dreams.

:.

Her self-defense tutor is hired when she is seven, not two weeks after her mother's death. A typical seven-year-old (and one who's been traumatized by the death of her mother at that), she's shy and apprehensive about meeting him at first, even though her father gently nudges her forward, murmuring reassurances that ring soft and sweet in her ears. So she gets around her fear, and he greets her with a warm smile and she calls him _sifu_ and he calls her _Asami,_ and he's as kind to her as if he was family.

He's a wiry man, someone that her father had met through his "connections," whatever they were. He has a skinny mustache and Asami never fails to let him know how funny she thinks it looks. But her sifu is kind and knowledgeable and only ever laughs at her childish jabs before correcting her forms with nothing but gentle words and encouragement.

_"Nothing is impossible,"_ is one of his anecdotes. _"If you look closely, you'll even see that the words 'I'm possible' are contained within. You, Asami, want every stance to be perfect, and without a doubt you are capable enough to make them such."_

_"Some people may have an advantage over you,"_ sifu continues. _"It isn't fair, but if you work hard, you can overcome that advantage."_

Seven-year-old Asami nods solemnly at her sifu's words and shamelessly proceeds to feign understanding, because his words are just that important and _grand._

(Still, she does not understand what this advantage that her sifu speaks of is.)

:.

At school one day, she manages to knock down an earthbender during recess, _hard_. His breath leaves him in a whoosh when his back hits the ground, mouth gaped in a soundless wail, that's audible even from her frozen position above him, her eyes widening in vexation as she processes what she's done.

It's not as if he hadn't deserved it. He's an impudent braggart of a boy, all swagger and no brains, who uses his bending to flick rocks and dump piles of dirt onto students who are smaller than him.

He looks up, shocked. There's a pause that lasts a few seconds, or maybe a hundred lifetimes; then, an ugly grimace snaps into existence across his features, and with a snarl he kicks her feet from under her.

It's not that she doesn't know how to defend herself, because sifu's lessons have really amounted to something over the past couple of months, but what she isn't prepared for is someone who doesn't fight _fair._ She hits the ground with a thump and a gasp, rolling over on her side as the breath unwillingly forces itself from her lungs. A shower of dirt quickly follows and a sizable rock whacks her on the shoulder.

Asami is speechless when she props herself up on her elbows — her hair, which her father had so lovingly brushed that morning, is in an absolute disarray, and her skirt is torn and smudged with dirt.

The boy laughs nastily at her crumpled form, his green eyes glinting with cruel amusement. He saunters away with a triumphant swagger to his movements and leaves her on the ground to boil in her abject humiliation.

She vaguely registers the fact that there are students laughing at her, whether it is because they truly find some kind of sadistic pleasure in watching tears well up in her eyes, or because they themselves do not want to be on the receiving end of the earthbending boy's solid rocks and cruel fists, and it is at that moment that Asami doesn't think she can feel more rejected or alone.

Her faith in her sifu — and herself — is shaken that day.

She'd hurt that earthbender boy, and she comes to terms with the fact slowly.

But he'd hurt her back, and so much more.

:.

(Bending, she concludes, is a significant advantage indeed.)

:.

She doesn't realize at the time that this incident with the earthbending boy will come back to haunt her for years to come.

-—

_ii. there were two_

Asami is nine and she sits at the Sato mansion's dining room table, alone save for a glass of apple juice whose contents are rapidly disappearing down her throat. She finishes her lunch quietly and her father's abandoned plate glares at her. Asami eventually slides out of her seat and wanders after her father to his office (the door is closed and locked, as always).

She can hear him arguing over the phone, and after a few moments of unabashed eavesdropping, eventually meanders away to take a dip in the pool.

It's about benders, she knows.

It's always about benders.

:.

She keeps her love of pro-bending a secret — something that she is quite good at, a trait she has fortunately acquired through questionable means. She has been schooled her entire life in keeping certain aspects of her life a secret, and so, it is not that much of a feat.

At eighteen, and by some red string of fate, she ends up nearly running over the captain of her favorite team, the Fire Ferrets, with her moped.

:.

Turns out, it isn't a total disaster.

(His name is Mako.)

:.

She's never had the best relationship with fire or benders before (put them together and that would probably end up becoming a one-way ticket to disaster), but Mako forces her to reconsider.

(Because, she tells herself when twinges of unease prod at the edges of her conscience, _at least_ he cares.)

(Or he pretends to.)

:.

The first time Asami meets the Avatar, it's at a ridiculously ostentatious gala.

She's wrapped in a dark red number that flatters her svelte frame rather nicely, if she does say so herself, and it slips silky smooth against her skin. She and Mako are going as girlfriend and boyfriend and she wouldn't want to have it any other way.

Though it appears that the Avatar herself, upon meeting the two of them, _would _like to have it a different way, judging by the irritated glance she shoots Asami when she probably thinks that the heiress isn't looking.

Asami pretends not to notice it, still hanging from Mako's arm, but the unbidden thought pops into life and leapfrogs through her mind anyway, croaking ungracefully as it bounces wildly around her skull.

The Avatar's kind of cute when she's envious.

:.

By the end of the week, Asami concludes that the Avatar is so much more intriguing than she has ever given her credit for.

It's not the aura of omnipotence and grandeur that shrouds the title of Avatar itself, but rather no-strings-attached _Korra._ Asami had grown up around machines and stuffy private tutors ever since she could toddle around on two legs, being the heiress of Future Industries, and maybe it's just the fact that she finally has another person _her age_ and _her gender_ to talk to that makes Korra so fascinating. (Even if Korra herself seems to be a mite unreceptive to Asami's advances for them to become friends.)

Korra is brash and loud and the very opposite of sophisticated grace, barreling her way through problems she encounters like a battering ram thrown against a stone wall. But, Asami will readily admit, that is also what makes her _fun. _From her airbending — or lack thereof — to battling it out with Bolin for the last handful of fire flakes, there is nothing Korra does that she does not give a hundred percent of her energy and concentration.

And perhaps it reminds Asami of herself the tiniest bit, for reasons that aren't quite as good as the mere fact that they are passionate.

("Intriguing" doesn't really seem like the right word to use sometimes.)

:.

Korra, as she finds out one day when she takes the Avatar out onto the race track, is an absolute adrenaline junkie.

Which immediately gets her into Asami's good books.

(The Avatar, she concludes, can really be a good friend.)

:.

At eighteen-and-nine-months, her heart cracks into two.

Her father offers her a glove that sparks with lethal blue tendrils of electricity, offers her a choice that she really has no choice in.

_We are family, Asami,_ his eyes say, boring into her own. _You wouldn't turn on your family, would you?_

Her hand stretches forward, trembling imperceptibly enough that no one knows she's seizing up inside. Her outward façade remains cool and collected and she ignores the sharp gasp that sounds from behind her, rushes out of a person she knows as _Avatar,_ a girl she knows as _Korra_ in a gust of air that reeks of _betrayal_.

The glove slips onto her hand like it's made for her. She tests out the joints, supple and smooth movements, and a handful of electricity crackles into existence. The sparks dance across her palm, blinding blue streaks that snap through the air, eagerly awaiting the moment it gets the chance to touch warm flesh.

She is seven again, and she is glaring at the leering green-eyed boy who has stolen her toy without even a warning, and she _moves._

Her father crashes down. His breath leaves him in a whoosh when his back hits the ground, mouth gaped in a soundless wail, that's audible even from her frozen position above him with electricity still dancing in her palm, her eyes widening in shock as she processes what she's done.

She's seven again, and then she's eighteen, and she's every age in between, and she's just _shocked_ her father with who knows how many watts of electricity.

The difference lies within the fact that where the earthbending boy had gotten up and retaliated, Asami's father does not.

And that's what hurts her the most of all.

-—

_iii. young women, and_

Love is not a competition.

Or so Asami tells herself.

They've just found Korra, hauled into the city by Naga, after she'd been kidnapped by Tarrlok, who'd turned out to be a bloodbending megalomaniac. One thing leads to the next, and somehow, Asami finds herself leaning against the wall, peering into Air Temple Island's hospital ward.

Korra's hair is down and spills across the pillow, dark waves of brown lying pooled and splayed across the cotton. Mako's sitting right next to her, as he had been ever since the Avatar returned.

Asami stares for another moment or two, and then turns away.

She turns away from Mako tenderly brushing Korra's ragged hair away from her face because she doesn't want to hear the sound of her carefully guarded little heart cracking into pieces. She turns away from Mako looking at Korra with something more than an I-care-for-you-because-you're-my-best-friend look in his eyes because she's so damn _confused._ She turns away from the Avatar and the firebender because _love is not a competition _and this _thing _that Mako and Korra seem to have, it has to be a connection and it has to be there. She doesn't know how she feels about Mako anymore, doesn't even know how she feels about _Korra_, but she doesn't need to know. Not now, at least. What Asami needs to know and _does _know is that she would give anything — _anything _— to have her relationship with her father mended, one untainted by the name of _equality _(equals _suppression _equals _distaste _equals _desperation)_ and simply bound with love, the kind she hadn't truly felt for years now, really.

_Mako-and-Korra,_ though, leaves a strangely bitter taste in her mouth.

So she turns, and she trudges away on silent feet without sparing a single glance back.

_Love,_ she recites monotonously, _is not a competition._

:.

Not a week later, Asami's facing down her father once again, and she hates every moment of it.

The mecha suits are made of platinum, cold and impersonal in the face of snapping grappling hooks and electric explosives. Asami can only see a smear of her father through the tinted glass of the glass panes that cover the head of the machines, but that smear is all she needs to see him snarling down at her with a metaphorical arm raised, ready to smash her into a pasty mass of flesh and bone.

Her father. The earthbending boy.

Non-benders. Benders.

_And what's the difference now?_ she bitterly asks herself, bowing her head down. _Between the boy that pushed me down with bending, his advantage, and the father who is about to kill me?_

(It hits her at that moment that it really doesn't matter whether or not someone can control rocks or fire, nor if they can't, but it matters who they are at the base, as a human.)

:.

_"You really are a horrible father."_

:.

The next couple of months are a swirl of hectic absurdity that leaves Asami's head spinning. Future Industries nearly collapses into bankruptcy and recuperates within the span of a month. She cannot help but think that Vaatu, for all his imposing "spirit of darkness" image, looks like an innocent, giant black kite.

Then she tries to teach Korra how to drive and ends up nearly suffering from a coronary, and resolves to never do it again. She has such little time for light-hearted activities now that she doesn't really mind, though.

Spending time with Korra is nice.

:.

(Three weeks later, Korra is poisoned, and what's left of Asami's world crumbles into dusty bits around her.)

:.

"I'll only be away for a few weeks," Korra promises, a month or two into her recovery and after the fight with the Red Lotus, smiling weakly at Asami.

_If you say so,_ is what Asami wants to say.

"Well...see you then," is what comes out. "I'll miss you."

She doesn't stop waving, even long after Korra's ship has melted into the fog.

-—

_iv. they eventually found_

They'd corresponded with each other a lot at first.

Korra had sent letters to her all the time after she left for the Southern Water Tribe, and Asami in turn kept every single one of them locked inside a special drawer of her desk; for all she was worth, she'd taken to hoarding them like a squirrel frog does its nuts.

Korra's letters always arrived in the same format, which was certainly a welcome constant that Asami sought solace in when her life as CEO of Future Industries proved to be perhaps a little too hectic, a little too capricious. The solid black characters, brushstrokes refined in a certain way that Korra herself never really had been, were inked neatly onto a piece or two of light parchment folded exactly two times split into thirds, hidden away from prying eyes in an unadorned and plain blue envelope. If Asami would happen to find such an item while checking the mail for the day — and they usually arrived within two weeks of each other — it would be torn open immediately, right there on the driveway. There was many an embarrassing moment when the raven-haired nonbender had almost tripped over the front steps to her home and bashed her nose in because her eyes had been fixated eagerly onto lines of cramped black characters instead of where she was stepping.

But then the letters had stopped coming, and Asami was left with nothing but air in her hands when she trudged up the winding path that led to her home in the dark, to a desk devoid of anything but soporific reports and crumpled negotiations and an even emptier hole in her chest.

She hadn't realized how much she looked forward to the Avatar's letters until they stopped arriving.

_Dear Korra,_ her latest and last letter reads, an ugly scramble of words she throws together and then disassembles countless times over.

(She finds herself keeping count of every failure.)

_Dear Korra,_

_I wish you were here._

Too sappy. (One.)

_Dear Korra,_

_It's been a long time. If you could respond, it would make me feel better._

Too insistent. (Two.)

_Dear Korra,_

_I just want to know if you're okay._

Too abrupt. (Three.)

_Dear Korra,_

_How are the sea prunes?_

Too casual. (Four.)

_Dear Korra,_

_I need to see you._

Too desperate. (Five.) She trashes this one immediately and sits back, throwing the dark pen onto her desk with a groan. She remains there for a period of time — she doesn't know how long — but the sun is slipping below the line of mountains that border Republic City when she puts the utensil to paper again.

_Dear Korra,_ Asami writes at last.

_I miss you. It's not the same in Republic City without you. How are you feeling? Things are going well here. I just got a big contract to help redesign the city's infrastructure, so I'll be keeping pretty busy for a while._

She debates adding more, but in the end, she folds the piece of stock paper up neatly, two creases that splits the letter into thirds, sticks it into a plain white envelope, and sends it on its way.

_I hope I'll be seeing you soon again._

_Love, Asami_

:.

Asami still waits, even after two years crawl by with no indication of another sea-blue envelope being dropped onto her desk.

Two years after she had sent that last letter to Korra, waiting for a reply that would never come. Two years of unwillingly sharing space with a new being she dubbed as Worry and his brother Fear, because Worry and Fear go hand in hand and Asami didn't really know _how_ she'd react if she found out that the reason why she hadn't heard from Korra in a while was because there was no Korra left to correspond with.

She forces Worry and Fear away from her mind. Shoves them into a dusty, long-forgotten corner and shackles them tightly with chains made of Optimism and Faith, but still they wildly chafe against their bonds and their snarls echo across the vast expanse of the half-hearted tundra of dubious questions that still rage on inside of her darkest thoughts.

(Dreams of planting a fistful of electricity into her father's chest begin to make an unwelcome reappearance.)

:.

Her secretary comes in one day with a single envelope in his hands.

"Miss Sato, this just came in for you —"

"Thank you, Liqun," she says immediately, because she recognizes the stationary and it's blue and it's watermarked with the seal of the Water Tribes and oh _spirits_ Korra's written to her _she's finally written to her _—

The tears are dripping down her cheeks even before she realizes she's crying, tearing into the envelope as if it were a deliciously decadent meal she had been teased with for a month straight.

_Dear Asami,_ she reads.

_Dear Asami, I'm sorry I haven't written to you sooner, but every time I've tried, I never know what to say. The past two years have been the hardest of my life. Even though I can get around fine now, I still can't go into the Avatar State. I keep having visions of Zaheer and what happened that day. Katara thinks a lot of this is in my head, so I've been meditating a lot, but sometimes I worry I'll never recover._

_Please don't tell Mako and Bolin I wrote to you and not them. I don't want to hurt their feelings, but it's easier to tell you about this stuff. I don't think they'd understand._

She doesn't move for a long time after reading the letter, instead mulling over its contents in her mind.

In the end, she simply crumples into her desk chair, and cries.

She wants to help Korra, but she's just so fucking _helpless._

-—

_v. each other._

The letter (more like a note, really) that arrives another nine long months later is simple; ragged and stained with some unidentifiable substance.

It's also Asami's birthday, and she doesn't dare think of it as a coincidence.

_I remember when you told me you'd like to visit the Spirit World sometime. Maybe we can go, when everything is back to normal. When I'm...back._

_I know this isn't much, but I dropped into the Spirit World recently to get you some stuff. I hope you like it anyway and that you're doing well. I'll be back soon, hopefully. Thanks. Love you._

_Happy birthday, Asami._

There is no signature, nor any foreword. But the handwriting, albeit shaky and somewhat disjointed — Asami can identify it anywhere now.

_Love you,_ she reads, numbly.

(And who else could have been able to get a sparkling blue crystal fragment the color of those found around the Southern Portal and a bag of fresh tea leaves?)

_Love you,_ she reads.

(And who else but Korra would have been able to scrawl two words that are as light as air but carry so much meaning?)

_Love you,_ she reads.

(And who else but Korra would have been able to make a statement a hidden promise that Asami takes to heart?)

:.

At twenty-one, Asami waits.

She waits patiently, for Korra, and hangs onto the promise that the Avatar's birthday note _means_ something.

Because all her life, those she held close to her heart have ended up pushing themselves away, intentionally or not. Swaying back and forth like the inexorable tides lapping against the shore of a beach, eroding it away one sand grain at a time. Her mother, dead at the hands of a firebender. Her father, imprisoned and incarcerated in Republic City Jail, because he had hurt Asami in such ways that the scars will never completely heal, and because Asami had hurt him as equally, as viciously back. Mako, gone at both of their carefree volitions.

She's tired of losing people who mean something important to her. She's tired of _running._

So she waits, instead.

Patiently.

(She refuses to let Korra go.)

:.

When Korra rounds the corner with nervousness set in every crevice of her face three months later, Asami doesn't even wait.

She crushes the Avatar in a hug.

_I missed you,_ the hug says.

The fact that Korra is smiling when Asami relinquishes her grip says volumes.

_I missed you, too._

:.

(And that's how it begins.)

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><p><strong>the end<strong>


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